Okay, this is what I have been making when I should be working on a) my school work and b) my other piece 'A Matter of Small Differences'… I honestly don't know what possessed me to type out this thing, must have been some kind of critical chemical imbalance! Anyway, I don't own Teen Titans, Yu-Yu-Hakisho, or Warhammer 40,000. (Yes, this is a crossover of sorts. I won't apologize for that.) They are the property of their respective owners and I'm not challenging that! I seek no profit from this and merely hope to avoid being sued. Please enjoy.
An Infernal Obligation
By Wordbearer
Raven woke up after hours of nightmare flecked sleep, a sheen of sweat playing over her gray skin. She knew something was wrong, even before she felt the nausea roiling through her gut, even before the throbbing in her head drowned out her budding thoughts. She closed her eyes and grimaced against the pain, tumbling nightmare images of conflict and emotional frenzy dancing through her head. The dark mystic gestured and the shades opened to let in the late morning sunlight. She regretted it in an instant as agony set her brain afire. She slammed her eyes shut with a mild curse and quickly closed the curtains again.
Pulling herself upright, Raven clutched the covers to herself and whispered ferverently, "Please let this be the flu, or Ebola, or anything other than what I think it is." She hesitantly reached for the chakra embedded in her forehead, her fingers shaking with quiet dread. She touched the stone and felt it vibrating faintly like a tuning fork. Her hopes crushed, Raven pulled herself out of bed and mechanically changed into her uniform and cloak. After clasping her cloak she turned and looked at the mirror. Her chakra was glowing, flashing through a rainbow of colors. Raven pulled up her hood and rolled her eyes at the glowing dot of light that hovered in the darkness of her hood.
"I look ridiculous," the dark mystic muttered in a forced monotone. The embarrassment was a welcome relief from the oncoming dread she knew was going to engulf her later. She opened her door and braced herself against the door frame as nausea ripped through her skull at the barrage of light and noise emanating from the hallway. Raven cautiously made her way down the hall with her eyes closed, one hand resting on the wall to support her unsteady legs.
The surge of pain that accompanied the opening of the door informed her that her raucous teammates were awake and at their normal deafening volume. This would usually be nothing more than a regrettable irritation, but her present condition made the sound hack through her brain with all the subtly of a falling axe. She oozed her way over to her tea pot and fumbled to get it going, staring at it through eyes blurry with pain.
Cyborg took in the bedraggled appearance of his teammate and called out, "Raven. You look a little under the weather."
He paused and added, "And your stone thing is glowing…" As the others became aware of their reclusive teammate's state, looks of worry bloomed on their faces. Raven never got sick. This was a fact they hadn't seen violated in two years of living with the dark mystic. The glowing chakra was an accessory to this fact.
Starfire rushed over and said, "You have become sick! This is most terrible! Is it the common cold or the flu or the pox of chicken…"
Raven glared in the alien's general direction, "I have a headache, one that isn't helped by loud voices in my ear." Starfire instantly subdued herself and set about silencing Beastboy.
Robin quietly asked, "Is there anything we can do to help?" The chaos that question raised in the half-daemon's throbbing skull was monumental in its grief and anger.
A tiny core of darkly amused hysteria blazed in the heart of her mind, but none of it reached her face or voice, "No. I have to handle this alone. I'll just get my tea." The others flashed looks of dismay at this sentiment and they urgently whispered to one another from the couch as Raven went about making her tea.
Raven heard the entire whispered conversation out of one ear as she focused on making her customary drink.
Beastboy said, "We just can't leave her to be alone in her room! She's barely keeping up as is." Raven nearly stumbled as he said this, but managed to catch herself on the counter.
Cyborg concurred, "You're right. But if we do this the wrong way she'll get all stubborn."
"Yes. Friend Raven is quite inflexible when she feels pushed," chimed in Starfire.
Beastboy whispered, "Then we'll have to be sneaky about it and…" The pressure in the dark mystic's head suddenly spiked, making her drop the teapot and sending shards of pottery in every direction. Raven lurched backwards and put a hand to her forehead, strands of purple hair sweeping past her eyes. Her teammates arose with alarmed cries which powered spikes of pain through her psyche. The combination was too much for her and an erratic explosion of energy washed over the room. Objects were sent flying. Furniture was knocked to the floor. One of the room's large windows shattered outward. The titans took cover against the barrage that pulsed in waves, further demolishing the chamber.
Robin called out, "Raven! Stop! We want to help you." Raven moaned from a crouched position, deaf to anything save the pounding in her head. The voiceless urge demanded she break down, but to do that here would kill all her teammates and destroy a good portion of the city. She would not give into this instinct here. If she had to do this, she would do it in such a way so as to leave as many people as possible unhurt. The dark mystic grabbed a gobbet of self-control amid the pain and teleported to the most remote place she could think of. The resulting blast charred the floor, but the barrage of dark energy halted and the room settled back to normal.
The titans rose from cover and looked in shock at the leveled chamber. A breeze from the shattered window rustled her hair as Starfire worriedly spoke, "I do hope that that was not a normal headache."
Cyborg shock dirt from his arm and replied, "That wasn't just any headache. That was the grandmother of all headaches on steroids and driving a tank. We really have to find her and get her some help."
Robin nodded agreement, "That's obvious. Besides the fact she's our friend, Raven is liable to hurt someone in her current state." Everyone looked at the room again and nodded understanding. If she could level the main room of Titans Tower in ten seconds, things could get ugly.
Robin was in full-bore leadermode now as he lectured, "Let's head to the back up computer and get a fix on her location. Then we can…" The boy wonder trailed off as a figure seemed to step out of the air in front of him.
The endless expanse of the Arizona desert was a sea of yellow, red and brown. Amid this bleak panorama, one speck of blue stood out. The speck trembled in fear and pain, signs that indicated an imminent meal to the sharp-sided carrion lords of the desert. The vultures swung closer, seeing little that dissuaded them from closing with their prey. Dim minds reflected on the possibility that they could help this prize along on its way to death…Panic scattered the patient killers as a rock exploded into a million pieces, rent by a crackling burst of black power.
Raven moaned through clenched teeth as her power slipped out of her control once more. The pain was overwhelming, pressure that made Trigon seem feeble by comparison. The chakra hummed audibly and its polychromic glare stained everything around her. She couldn't hold it back anymore. This urge would not be denied. Praying that the area was deserted as it seemed to be, the half-daemon whispered in a tongue older than creation.
In Infernal, the language of the Abyss, Raven cried, "I am ready. Come for me if you are able." To speak Infernal was to make reality so and the pain melted away. Her mind was drowned in instinct. Her anguished resistance was supplanted by feral joy. The whisper echoed in her soul and boomed outward. It reverberated on the astral plane and reached the ear of every daemon for 300,000 miles.
The call swept out. It resonated from blasphemous ruins that gave praise to a god of blood and slaughter. It resonated in the gore-drenched thoughts of a hulking fiend that was the physical embodiment of violent death. The immortal beast towered in a sacrificial chamber; the bodies of willing victims beneath it brazen hooves. The breath caught in its chest as the blood quickened in its veins. It clenched and unclenched its fist around the haft of an axe ten feet long. Ichor-soaked wings pumped as hellish fire glared from the saw-toothed maw of its horse shaped head. It ignored the calls of its worshippers as they shouted, "Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!" The malnourished cultists stared at the bloodthirster in rapt joy even as shaven acolytes slit their throats. The air throbbed with terrible promise, murder seeming to boil in the air awaiting expression.
The daemon spoke, "I come." The bloodthirster vanished in a burst of foul wind, slave to Raven's summons.
The call swept out. It bounced amid the mountains and into a village awash with suffering. The village had been happy an hour before, but that was before the Child had come. Animals with limbs ripped off littered the ground. Screaming villagers were bound to the rock, every inch of skin pealed from their bodies. Six-eyed hounds gnawed the bloody bones of children. The well was overflowing with pus, a stagnant stream of filth oozing into the ground. In the heart of the village, the architect of this horror crouched atop a moaning thing that might have once passed for human. The daemon wore the form of a naked child, pale of skin and golden haired. Not a speck of filth disturbed its flawless façade as it ran a glowing figure through molten flesh. As it heard the call, it looked upward with insanely joyful blue eyes. The daemonic abomination gibbered assent and vaporized its servants with a gesture of its delicate fingers. The Child vanished, slave to Raven's summons.
The call swept out. It beamed into the void and enwrapped the grey sphere of rock man referred to as the moon. Buried in the dust of a million years, a rune chiseled monolith glowed as its prisoner thrashed in uneasy rest. The prisoner was a daemon so ancient it had never been named in any human tongue. It was a spirit so long forgotten that the very homeworld of its entrappers was dead and cold. The call woke it from its stupor and sent it into a frenzy. The nameless spirit felt fathomless lust shake its being and thrashed within its prison. The spirit flung itself against its ethereal bonds and screamed. The agony bit to its core. Again, the spirit threw itself forward and again it was wracked with pain.
The beast cried in Infernal. "I come! I come! I come! I…" This spirit, feeble and stupid from deprivation, from an imprisonment older than mankind, tried again and again to answer the call. The agony only encouraged the spirit in its futile efforts. The daemon raged for the freedom to fly forth, slave to Raven's summons.
The call swept out. It rang among the trees of a northern forest and bounced over burbling streams rimmed in frost. It reached the ears of a cross-legged figure, one lost in contemplation. The narrow face beneath its vertically pointed mass of black hair twitched as the call disturbed its focus. Eyes as red as fresh blood snapped open beneath a bandana concealing a strange lump in the middle of its forehead and he could feel the astral beacon caressing every nerve ending. The lean youthful figure was draped in black clothing. He rose with flickering grace, every movement considered in advance. Listening with the mind's ear, the youth frowned and whispered a mild curse. His body shaking with the effort of resisting the call, he grabbed a sheathed katana and tightly strapped it about his waist. The fire daemon blurred into hypersonic motion, a dark wind that leapt from place to place. He moved south with eyes locked on his unseen target, slave to Raven's call.
The coalescing figure seemed unconcerned with the quartet of metahumans staring suspiciously at him, half of them aiming glowing limbs in his direction. He wore a blue body glove with gold accessories. A cloak drowned his form and a featureless helm masked every part of his face, not even eyes breaking the gleaming helmet's curved perfection. He towered over the titans, his body a sculpted monument to the art of weight training.
Cyborg was more than a little intimidated and blustered to cover his nervousness, "Okay. You have ten seconds to explain who are or you're going to get a chestful of sonic energy…" Starfire's eyes glared as she sternly nodded agreement with her teammate, a second away from blasting the unannounced visitor with hails of starbolts. Robin came out of his shock and got between the masked visitor and his team.
Quickly he commanded, "Cool it! This is Doctor Fate, a big time hero who sometimes helps out the Justice League. He's not here to hurt us."
Robin looked back and muttered, "Or he shouldn't be…" Fate coldly focused on Robin before turning back to the group.
His voice was cultured as he spoke, "Robin is correct. I am here to prevent you from doing something foolish." Various degrees of anger appeared on everyone's face.
Starfire inquired, "And why would we do something foolish? We are merely going to help our friend Raven."
Fate was deadly serious now, "That is the problem, your friend is the danger and to go to her would condemn you all to death against a legion of foes you couldn't hope to defeat."
Having overcome his awe, Beastboy added, "Hey! I think that what we can handle is something we can figure out for ourselves. This is our friend, you demanding jerk."
Robin was more diplomatic, "If I think the situation is too dangerous, I'll have us fall back. We need to gather information firsthand though."
Fate waved away their statements and intoned, "The situation involving Raven is more delicate than you know. To interfere would condemn her, you, and likely a good portion of this planet to death and destruction. I already had to stop the Justice League from bumbling their way to a catastrophe."
Beastboy whispered to Cyborg, "How come everyone Robin knows are such stuck-up jerks? This guy must be the king of control freaks…" A sour expression polluted Robin's face. If Doctor Fate had convinced the high and mighty Justice League to stay out of it, this conversation was already decided. Still, he had to try, for Raven's sake.
Faking a respectful tone he didn't feel, "Fate. One of my teammates has apparently had a breakdown and leveled a room in ten seconds. She could hurt people in her current state. How could seeking to help her cause more harm?"
The way the helmed figure replied carried overtones of reproach, "You obviously understand very little of your friend's nature. She has attempted to limit the effects of this ordeal on the populace and any interference would only make the situation worse. Raven has certain realities to deal with and this is one of the more deadly of them."
Starfire loudly interjected, "If Raven is in danger; we must help her regardless of the cost! She has told me something of her past and there is nothing that she could not be helped with if we had a chance to talk with her. Let us just…"
Fate interrupted, "Do you know what your friend is? Really? To the degree that you would be capable of understanding the nature of this problem?"
Understanding entered Starfire's eyes and she drooped, "If this is something like that, then you are right."
Cyborg cried out, "Okay what's going one? Why did Raven destroy the room, why are you saying we can't help her, and what in the name of heck does 'Raven's nature' have to do anything? Sure the inside of her head is crazy scary, but that's no reason we couldn't help her. Raven is creepy, but she's human!" Beastboy enthusiastically nodded agreement and Fate gave the group a pitying look.
"You friend has told most of you nothing substantial about herself," Fate intoned grimly, "and you should know better if you have entered her mind and survived the experience." Robin was completely bewildered by now, but didn't say a word.
The helmed sorcerer-lord continued, "I would normally not betray your friend's secrets if she hasn't seen fit to reveal them to you, but you need convincing as to the seriousness of this situation. Raven is not fully human, she has aspects of her heritage that make her do things she would rather not, things she's ashamed of. This is one of them. Because of what she is, she must call others like herself to her and engage in a rite older than the world. This is delicate rite that can shift from a self-contained storm to a planet-wide orgy of death if disturbed. Your friend would be the heart of this swarm, the most destructive of its members." The Titans went pale, all of them remembered Doctor Light and the darkly glorious spectacle of Raven reducing him to a crying lump.
Robin couldn't quite kill his curiosity and asked, "What is this rite for?"
Fate cocked his head and hesitantly answered, "The celebration of immortality, the purging of weakness, and the creation of new spawn."
Beastboy's jaw dropped and he mumbled, "You're talking about, about… mating. This is something to do with Raven, a lot of someones who don't sound human, and reproduction."
He shuddered in horror as his teammates stared at him. "What? I'm Beastboy! I know a little about animals. I have to be careful about these kinds of things… There was this time with this dog in an alley… and I don't want to talk about it."
Fate's voice almost held respect, "That is precisely what's happening right now. Your friend's mind is asleep, buried beneath a cascade of impulses she can't resist. What she's going to do is involuntary for her as it is involuntary for those who she called. When she returns, she will be likely be ashamed beyond measure and need all the support you can give her." Everyone fell silent at that thought, reflecting on what they imagined Raven's ordeal was like. None of them came even close.
The Arizona desert was broiling hot, not only from the physical heat of the sun but from the ethereal surge of power that boiled from the hoard of figures that stood in a roughly circular mob in the heart of the desert. The hoard filled a small valley, packed shoulder to shoulder, a sight to make a madman faint in terror. Raven's call had brought every daemon with the power to reach her to this deserted section of Arizona. There were creatures that bore every combination of human, animal, and unnatural feature possible. Some were pestilent mounds of rot. Some, like the bloodthirster, were massive ichor- soaked killers, the very image of the biblical Satan. Others wore innocent and harmless visages to fool those who met them as to their true horrific nature, among them the naked Child and the red-eyed youth with black hair. At the center of the mob, the strongest were gathered, a daemonic pecking order sorted out by brief sharp episodes of violence. The losers were relegated to the edge, reduced to glaring mindless hate at their betters. Around the feet of these bitter horrors insignificant spawn fought, replicating the violence on a miniature scale. Ebony rats with blazing eyes wrestled with bloated infants in a mindless quest to get closer to the source of the call. That their struggles mattered for naught was insignificant. The aura of controlled frenzy filled the air with expectancy. For every will locked in combat, ten more were locked on the heart of this hoard, on the blue-cloaked figure that had summoned them.
Raven crouched in a clearing at the heart of the infernal mob, her aura blazing like a bonfire. Her cloak lazily lashed around her, enveloping her frame in yards of living cloth. The half-daemon's quartet of eyes blazed from the shadows of her hood, quietly measuring the mob against some infernal standard. There was nothing human in her mind, primal understanding guiding her will and making her hold still until some threshold was reached. Sweat dripped slowly from her face as the sun marked out minutes that crawled by like hours. Unholy joy strummed through her petite frame as that threshold was obtained and the feeling of frenzied need filling her mind broke like a crimson wave. She was flooded with borrowed strength and tensed for a few more seconds, waiting for the power to peak.
Without a word, Raven rose into the air and hovered, an azule serpent of cloth borne up by an ebony aura. The hoard froze. Daemonic hunger stilled the restless mob, blind need filling their minds. The dark mystic smirked unkindly and darted off into the air, trailing black flame. The hoard howled in a thousand and one voices before following. The cry panicked every living thing for fifty miles. Those with wings lifted off with explosive downbeats of their pinions. Others rose in polychromic auras of their own, borne aloft by flares of eldritch might. The more desperate, the weak without the power of flight, attempted to teleport into the air above Raven's darting form. Most dropped without coming close; their bodies plummeting hundreds of feet to splatter against the desert rocks below. A few managed to grab hold of the dark mystic's cloak only to be thrown off as she contemptuously rolled, climbed, and dived with all the savage power of a tornado. They joined their comrades in falling death.
The majority of her infernal petitioners formed a vast swarm to her rear, racing to catch up to the alluring prize that taunted them by repeatedly speeding up and slowing down. Frenzy found release as rage, the swarm convulsing in violence. It shed falling bodies that dissolved even as they hit the ground, the spirits inhabiting the twisted forms banished back into the Abyss. Magical energies flared as those who could channel power did so to cast down their rivals. Others lashed out with tooth, claw, and blade, inflicting grievous wounds with every kind of bladed instrument or body part imaginable. The bloodthirster flailed with its axe and bit daemons in half with its maw. The perverse Child playfully tapped unsuspecting rivals and grinned as their bodies were wracked with debilitating mutation. The black-clad youth used his winged brethren to move toward the front of the swarm in blurred leaps and repaid his stepping stones with delicate yet lethal cuts of his blade that sent them tumbling.
The Child burst from the front of the swarm in a cascade of searing golden light. Its blue eyes blazed with lust as it closed with Raven, golden locks flapping in the thunderous crosswinds. The dark mystic looked back at the swarm and noticed the boldest of her pursuers.
Her quartet of eyes narrowed in displeasure, prompting her to psionically whisper into the horror's mind, "The chase is not yet done. I am not yet bored with this flight." The Child's features didn't move even as it was hacked apart by a barrage of ebony scythes. The pale chunks of flesh exploded into light as its spirit was dragged screaming into the Abyss from whence it came. Raven turned her head to speed forward again, her summary execution having given the swarm the chance to draw dangerously close.
Raven could feel the twisted mix of lust, hate and monomanical drive that pulled them in pursuit of her, a heady cocktail of emotions that would normally disgust her, but only encouraged her on in her altered state-of-mind. Everything that made her the quiet, introvert her friends knew was turned off, buried beneath pulses of overwhelming daemonic instinct. Thus, she smiled when the bloodthirster burst from the flock. Wounds peppered its form and the carcass of a lesser daemon twitched feebly in its mouth. The blood-soaked hulk hurled itself at her and she grinned as she dodged away at the last second. Her snapping cloak spat darkness all over its back, provoking a cry of pain from the horror. The dark mystic playfully burned and cut the fearsome killer, causally testing her potential mate. The bloodthirster flailed in response, not seeking to kill for once in its long existence, but to grab. The swarm held back, aware of the process that was going on between the two entities. Sparks danced between the two, the bloodthirster moaning as the urges that had driven it on this flight began to be satiated.
Raven looked up after making a snaking pass around the monstrous form. She cocked her head in interest at the black-clad figure leaping at her and the bloodthirster. She peeled away from the bloodthirster, causing it to skip a wing beat. The small dark figure drove his blade into the others back as he landed; the gleaming katana lost amid dark flesh. The bloodthirster bucked in pain, but he rolled with the motion and ripped the blade free. The bloodthirster rolled to spill this irritant to the void. The black-clad fire daemon anticipated the motion and clung to a fleshy dreadlock and swung, taking the opportunity to rip a long slash across the hulk's throat. The bloodthirster gave a final choking cry and stilled. It fell and dissolved into a bloody mist that writhed in fear before scattering all over the thirsty soil of the desert.
The black clad youth reappeared amid the much dwindled daemonic flock and halted his descent by landing on the soft flesh of some many winged giant. He gripped the emerald fuzz of the creature's shoulders and ignored the thrashing of his unwilling mount. His scarlet eyes locked onto the blue-cloaked daemoness who had called this madness into being. He roughly sheathed his katana and pulled back the fabric of his right sleeve. Casually keeping his place, he focused inward. The lump on his forehead ignited and burned away the bandana covering it. It was an eye, a slited orb the color of white jade.
The eye blazed with unholy light as he whispered, "She is mine. Not one of you is worthy of this chance." He stiffened and an electric aura played about him.
All three eyes ablaze, the dark youth shouted in Infernal, "Dragon… Of the darkness… Flame!" The cry ripped into the Abyss to a being mighty and ancient amid daemonkind and the shock of its passage into this world stunned the nearby daemons. The youth's body convulsed as the mighty dragon's spirit entered his being. His right arm became sheathed in living fire that drank in the light. The fire daemon leapt upward from his mount and released the energy that amped through his form with almost painful intensity.
The power surged from his body in the form of a vast serpentine dragon sculpted from flame. Its eyes were glowing pits amid flowing black scales. The blast threw the dark-haired figure through the air towards Raven even as the leviathan laid waste to the swarm. The daemons' mindless need drove them to slam into the dragon's coils and vanish amid the fire, not a flicker of fear in their desire-bound minds. All four of the dark mystic's eyes lit up with joy as the swarm was decimated. She turned her gaze to the hurling figure and swooped to intercept him. Lithe strong arms gripped her shoulders and Raven stared into a pair of scarlet pupils inches from her own amid an aura of flickering sparks.
The dark-haired youth whispered fiercely, "Hiei the Swordsman claims this chance by right of strength."
The surgingjoy in the half-daemon's demonically-shrouded mind made her smile broadly and answer, "Raven accepts your claim." Her cloak rolled up and engulfed them both as sparks played between their bodies. A flare of darkness burst and they vanished, leaving the spectacle of the fiery wrym to fade away beneath the Arizona sun.
A blind eternity later, Raven awoke to find herself sprawled on a rock. She squinted up at the darkening sky and pulled herself up to a sitting position. Her clothing was undisturbed as there is no need for physical contact in daemonic mating, the act of intercourse being a mixture of the two entities' auras more than anything else. The pain was gone; the pressure absent from her mind. Everything was in its place and she could feel the reassuring calm that echoed through her brain. She hadn't had her emotions stabilized like this for a very long time.
The dark mystic wrinkled her forehead in thought, "I haven't been this much in control since I can remember. In fact, this morning I was…" The implications of this conclusion snapped her out of her daze and she looked around seeing the results of her instinct-bound actions for the first time.
The first thing she noticed was the shock of black hair the bobbed behind a boulder to her left. Hiei rose as he finished cleaning his katana and shot an irritated glare at her. His visage prompted a stream of fever-dream images, distorted pictures that identified him in her mind with blazing clarity.
Hiei snapped, "As much as I dislike being summoned halfway across the world against my will, I will admit that this was suitably strenuous exercise." Raven didn't hear him, her attention caught by something writhing in the dust at her feet. It was shaped like a fat, lumpy sausage and sported a dozen rat-like tails all over its body. Its feeble spasms repulsed the half-daemon, but something about it evoked feelings of pity in her.
"Don't tell me you're distracted by a spawnling," Hiei cut in dismissively.
"They'll all be dead soon and take their place in the Pit." Raven gave him a side-long glare and noticed the dozens of other spawnlings that tried to hide themselves with clumsy efforts.
She reached out telepathically and touched the feeble mind of the thing at her feet. The surge of chaotic images forced her to close the link almost immediately. The spawnling's mind was awash with agony. The air was too hot and dry. The ground was too cold and wet. The light from above was too bright. The darkness below filled the spawnling with fear. Quick, gasping breaths failed to satisfy the need for air that burned through its body. Raven urgently forced the borrowed memories away, repulsed by the horrific intensity of the spawnling's sensations.
Hiei blasted contempt at her, "Fool. You must have been virgin to try and touch the mind of a spawnling."
Raven looked directly at the fire daemon, her features composed as her thoughts whirled, "I made these things. These sad tortured things came into being when Hiei and I… They are going to die and flee into the Abyss only to be enslaved by the first daemon they meet." The cruelty of it all made her want to cry but Raven suppressed the urge with practiced ease.
Aloud the dark mystic said, "They will have it so hard."
Hiei's face was frozen into an expressionless mask so much like her own as he retorted, "You know nothing of hard, crossbreed. You didn't have to claw your way out of the Pit. You didn't have to scramble, grip, and hoard every ounce of knowledge for 500 years just to qualify as sentient. You didn't have to abandon whatever you were doing to rush to a gods forsaken desert to fight against a Host of your brethren against your will. You…"
Raven waited until Hiei finished his litany of woes before quietly adding, "I didn't choose what I am. I did not choose my nature or choose this course of action. I'm trapped, too."
Hiei spat, "Trapped? You have an existence that most daemons would fight 10,000 years to possess! You have the freedom to explore the material universe, a freedom I gained at a price beyond measure to achieve. You are the daughter of the greatest of us and He would elevate you in a second if you embraced your heritage."
Raven's eye twitched as she contemplated the results of her 'embracing her heritage' this day while Hiei continued, "The position of Trigon's Emissary is one most of us would accept in a second, but he waits for you to come to your senses. Don't talk to me about trapped. You are trapped in a heaven by the standards of the Abyss."
Raven's anger snapped free of her self-control, her pride perturbed by Hiei's acid tongue.
Her aura burned and she shouted, "Heaven? This is no heaven! I just woke up to find that I am responsible for condemning hundreds of new beings to hundreds of years of torment!" The spawnlings began to pop with foul bursts of gas, their delicate bodies ruptured by Raven's surging power.
The half-daemon continued in a slightly calmer tone, "I could destroy everyone on this planet in a heartbeat by letting my 'Glorious Father' through the gate in my soul! I have the potential death of every being on this planet resting on my conscience. If I…" Her tirade was cut short by the sudden pressure of Hiei's hand on her throat. His super-sonic speed had allowed him to wrap his hands around the half-daemon's throat and lift her into the air before she could blink. Hiei's voice was matter-of-fact, but his eyes held a deadly rage that gave Raven pause.
He intoned, "There are daemons' who slay their mates as a matter of course, repayment for the trouble you put us through. I personally find the custom barbaric. Too many of our kindred have been sent screaming into the Abyss this day already. I am proud of my self-control, but your self-pity seriously tempts me to indulge my anger."
Raven whispered in fear, "No, that would…"
Hiei cocked his head and interrupted, "Strip you of your soul? Send what's left of your naked spirit hurling into the Abyss to be consumed? Leave you helpless to resist Trigon's will and begin an orgy of death not seen since the chaotic millennia of the War in Heaven?"
The fire daemon tightened his grip and Raven began to black out. Just as she was loosing consciousness, Hiei dropped her and vanished. Hiei coughed from her knees and kept her eyes darting around in search of her suddenly-violent mate.
Hiei's voice issued from behind her, "Too slow, crossbreed. I could disembowel you a dozen times before you even knew I was there." She turned in time to catch him tapping the hilt of his katana, inscrutably calm once more. Knowing it was useless, the dark mystic lobbed a rock at Hiei and didn't bother to track the projectile as it whisked through empty air.
She could feel him nearby and whispered, 'Then why don't you do so?"
Hiei appeared on a rock in front of her, his voice sardonically pitched, "One, your Father is quite protective of you. If I were to slay you, he would set half the Abyss on me and the other half would be too scared to aid me. I enjoy my life, unlike a certain crossbreed I could mention."
His voice twisted with contempt as he finished, "Two, I don't kill children. You're not worth my time. Goodbye, crossbreed." Hiei vanished without another word. That was that, daemonic reproduction carried with it no attendant emotional linkage save for a sullen anger on the part of both parties should they ever meet again. A subtle tapping of her telepathic senses informed her that the area was empty of all save herself and the last few dying spawnlings. A vague aura of discontent emanated from their tortured minds, a vestigial lust for death already present in their proto-consciousnesses. Knowing there was nothing she could do for them or for her bruised psyche by remaining in this place; Raven buried the restless emotions that slinked through her mind. The dark mystic gathered her power and vanished in a silent burst of black light.
The clock in the hall read 7:57 pm when Raven appeared in the darkened corridor. The gray walls were darkened into a murky indigo that reflected her mood. Raven was awash with more discontent than she wanted to think about. Things like today's events made her feel filthy, less than an animal. She carefully rechecked that her hood was secure about her head, an unconscious gesture that telegraphed the raging emotional turmoil she couldn't afford to indulge.
The dark mystic sighed, "Reality is. It doesn't help to obsess over the past, for the past can't be changed." The maxim helped her to muster the reserves of her stoicism. She slowly walked forward, a waterfall of dark blue fabric in the dimly illuminated hallway. Eventually, Raven paused in front of her door, one hand on the control pad that would unlock the door. There was a small pile of envelopes by the wall, all of them labeled with her name. Eyebrow raised in question, she knelt and flicked through them. There were four, one from each of her fellow Titans. The enigma of the envelopes pushed her malaise to one side, but the realization that she would have to explain what happened today sent her on a new tangent of dread.
"As if I didn't have enough to worry about," Raven bitterly mused as she rolled her eyes.
Her stomach rumbled threateningly, what little appetite she normally had been amplified a dozen-fold by the vigorous nature of her flight. Most of what she had burned through had been borrowed power, but the portion that she had used from her own reserves would have to be restored. That meant eating. She turned away from the comforting darkness of her room and headed toward the main room in search of something that she could throw together quick and dirty. She was grateful for the silence, fully aware how rare this quality was in the tower at this hour of the night. The main room was empty, the worst of the mess cleaned up earlier that day. A plastic tarp covered the shattered window. Raven didn't bother to turn on the light, fully able to see in the gloom, another gift of her daemonic heritage.
She noticed a note on the table which read, "Raven, We're out to see a movie, be back at nine. Don't worry about the mess, you were stressed today. Thought you might like the Tower to yourself… Robin." The courtesy would have brought a fleeting smile to her lips, but Raven was too absorbed in her funk to indulge in the gesture. She put down her pile of envelopes and searched for something to eat. The half-daemon pulled out her reserve tea kettle and set up her tea as she settled for some fruit and cheese. She didn't know how old the cheese was, but there was no way that she was going to touch the dish full of baked tofu product and the glowing jelly that she assumed was made by Starfire… She would have sworn that the later was moving by itself. It wouldn't be the first time that something like that happened. The kettle whistled in readiness and she brought the whole array over to the table.
In between sips of piping hot, herbal tea and bites of food, Raven read the contents of her envelopes. The first was from Cyborg, rendered typically crude by the clumsy bulk of his bionic hands, a note that expressed sympathy about her 'condition'. That brought confusion to her mind, a confusion that was drowned in old bitterness as she read the name Dr.Fate. The thought of the self-assured sorcerer-lord was enough to make her rub her temples in irritation.
"Of course," she muttered, "he would get involved. And tell them just enough to get them curious… Tomorrow is going to be hell." She discarded the note and moved onto the next. Robin and Starfire's notes could have been clones of Cyborg's, albeit clones with divergent personalities, Starfire's was bubbly and sympathic, Robin's was concise and nakedly commanding at times. She almost discarded Beastboy's notes out of hand when she saw the crude scrawl he claimed as handwriting.
She hesitated and asked the empty room, "Why not? No one has to know since I'm alone…" Raven ripped open the envelope and read the letter quickly. She paused and read it more slowly, surprised by the contents of the note.
The note was sloppily written, undeniably so, but betrayed a depth of thought she wouldn't have suspected Beastboy as being capable of…
"Raven," the note began, "This big bad muckity-muck that apparently scares the pants off the Justice League, showed up after your little temper tantrum. And he told us stuff, stuff made you seem really bad, stuff that you haven't even hinted at. Not that you would, you hide a good secret more persistently than I would hide a goodplateful of tofu muffins…" Raven rolled her eyes, but continued to read, "Anyway, don't feel too bad about today. You may be dark and uber-scary at times, but you're our friend. Don't forget that when you go into your room and start your 'if I meditate, I can make the problem go away by myself since my teammates are too stupid to understand my problems' routine. Beastboy." The dark mystic paused to stuff an apple slice in her mouth before reading the last part of the note, "P.S. I'm still going to get you to laugh. I swear by my Gamestation 2…"
Raven pushed herself to her feet, a controlled expression on her face, and wandered aimlessly over to the intact window and looked over the darkening sea. The storm in her mind was still there, but somehow she felt like it wasn't so bad.
She mused aloud, "Must be the herbal tea. I really should go meditate before heading to bed." Raven carefully shredded the pile of notes with her telekinesis and dumped the pile of fresh confetti in a trash can. A flare of dark light pulsed briefly and Raven was gone. Titans Tower filled with an expectant silence.
So you made it down here. I had no idea that this abomination would turn out this long, it just kept growing… Anyway, what did you think? Good? Bad? A perversion that needs to be destroyed? (I've never written a relationshipesque piece and I have serious doubts about this one.) If you see fit, leave a review and tell me what you think. I know I played all sides of the court this time, but was in service of the plot, please don't hit me… Thank you for time.